Punctuate the be with a question’s mark
in a room with a rug pace-worn and thinning
at its fibrous and tufted middle. The writing

bounces between clefs as the tune’s orchestrated
dithering is imagined at once clarinet, serene
oboe, tympanic thunder rippling against a lyric’s

thin walls. Failure of the vocative, tired
metaphor, passion’s metonymy the stuff
of wallpaper at bed and breakfasts no longer

frequented on the gray coast of the Atlantic,
the smaller of the four oceans, the dirtiest,
the one whose color depends so much

on the right latitude, the shipping routes,
the weather and its variables of cloud and crash,
the moon’s veiled faces, the scudding

shreds of atmosphere. Here at this coast,
on the isthmus scraped of its soil
by the constant wind, any emotion

clutches at your jacket for the warmth
it needs to blossom. The only punctuation being
a dash, not quite an arrow, not quite a stop.

– Gabriel Welsch